Iron Horse trains - releases

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andythenorth
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.0 Released 21st February 2021

Post by andythenorth »

"I wish my horse had the speed of your tongue." - Shakespeare

Iron Horse 2.21.0 now on Bananas!

This is an extra special BAD FEATURE release adding...Restaurant Cars :twisted:

Some notes after the changelog also.

2.21.0 Release

Changes
  • added Restaurant Cars
    • adding a Restaurant Car to a train will provide a bonus: improved run costs and payment rates for all Passenger Coaches and Luxury Passenger Coaches in the train
    • the bonus reduces run costs for those coaches by 70%
    • the bonus increases cargo aging rate for those coaches by 30%
    • the bonus is applied once only per train, adding more than one Restaurant Car will have no additional effect
    • the bonus applies only to Passenger Coaches and Luxury Passenger Coaches, not railcars, high-speed trains, mail vans etc
    • the bonus can significantly improve profits on some routes, but Restaurant Cars are expensive to buy and run...it's up to you to decide if they're worth it ;)
  • rebalanced Passenger Coach and Luxury Passenger Coach purchase and run costs
  • simplified cargo aging for passenger vehicles
    • Passenger Coaches are unchanged, with faster carging (roughly every 0.75 days)
    • Metro trains are unchanged, with very fast cargo aging (roughly every 0.47 days)
    • all other passenger vehicles now use the same standard value for cargo aging (every 2.5 days), where some previously had slower aging rates
    • this change simplifies balancing between passenger vehicles (and makes maintenance of the grf easier)
    • gameplay effect of this change should be negligible in most games
  • renamed Luxury Railcars to Express Railcars
  • minor tweaks to purchase costs of Express Railcars, Express Railcar Trailers and Railcar Trailers
  • improved appearance of Blackthorn and Stentor engines
all_restaurant_cars.png
all_restaurant_cars.png (167.61 KiB) Viewed 9354 times
Are Restaurant Cars a good idea? Who knows? Try them out! See if they add any fun :D

Some things I found from testing Restaurant Cars...

1. Effect is very variable depending on route length, train length, train speed, loading factor (% of train capacity used on average) etc

2. Less effective on short trains (less than 4 coaches or so as a rough guide)

3. More beneficial with Passenger Coaches than Luxury Passenger Coaches

4. More beneficial on longer routes (use 64 tiles as a rough guide, but it's a very rough measure)

5. Less effective on long routes as trains get faster (very helpful on 75mph trains, less so on 125mph trains)

6. Might be very beneficial on trains that don't run fully loaded all the time

7. Work better when you have room to add the restaurant car as extra, instead of having to replace one pax coach when stations are short

So, let's do some science making trains and find out where they're most useful, profitable, valuable!

Or just add them because you like them. :twisted:

restaurant_car_effect.png
restaurant_car_effect.png (303.9 KiB) Viewed 9345 times
LaChupacabra
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.0 Released 21st February 2021

Post by LaChupacabra »

andythenorth wrote: 21 Feb 2021 21:22 Are Restaurant Cars a good idea?
This is definitely a good idea. :)
Such wagons are part of the PKP set and diversify it in an interesting way. They also have an impact on cargo aging, although I think that it is a bit too small, because it takes quite a long route to make it profitable.

The longer the route (time), the greater the benefits of having this car on the train. It's no other way. ;)

andythenorth wrote: 21 Feb 2021 21:22 [list]
[*]added Restaurant Cars[list]
[*]adding a Restaurant Car to a train will provide a bonus:
[*]the bonus reduces run costs for those coaches by 70%
[*]...
[*]the bonus can significantly improve profits on some routes, but Restaurant Cars are expensive to buy and run...it's up to you to decide if they're worth it ;)[/list]
I guess you had few concepts here and haven't finally decided which one to choose. :)
I think that lowering the operating costs is quite strange and paradoxically, this makes these wagons most profitable on short journeys where maintenance costs are catching up with revenues.

I have not tested the new version yet, but I remember that there was such a mistake in the PKP that the cargo aging bonus differed depending on the location of the car in the train.

There was also a discussion on how to show this bonus in the description. McZapkie in Polroad used a new parameter called comfort. He directly provided the cargo aging value. I understand it, but for someone who doesn't know the game mechanics that well, these numbers might be weird. I thought percent marking would be better. E.g. 100% for 185, 200% for ... 800? Not linear anyway, to avoid weird values. The point of reference could be how much you can earn on the transport of one passenger over a distance (e.g. 200 days). I think it would be worth developing a parameter formula that could also be used in other sets (not only yours).

[+] Spoiler
Image
There is also the question of distinguishing the wagons - they are very similar to each other. I don't know if it makes sense here because you use 2CC colors, but often cars of different classes and functions are marked with different colors. In the case of the PKP set, it is a colored stripe above the windows. I don't know how it is marked in Great Britain, but I think it is similar - I found something like this (the last car).

I made the font smaller - thanks to this, the next wall of text is slightly smaller. ;)
Attachments
Comfort conception.png
Comfort conception.png (378.03 KiB) Viewed 4032 times
Mikkamakka
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.0 Released 21st February 2021

Post by Mikkamakka »

andythenorth wrote: 21 Feb 2021 21:22
4. More beneficial on longer routes (use 64 tiles as a rough guide, but it's a very rough measure)
Is 64 tiles a long distance? I feel like that is more like a metro or suburban route. Is there any guide about choosing the right vehicle for different distances? I find cargo aging a bit confusing tbh. :D
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.0 Released 21st February 2021

Post by andythenorth »

Mikkamakka wrote: 22 Feb 2021 13:31 Is 64 tiles a long distance? I feel like that is more like a metro or suburban route. Is there any guide about choosing the right vehicle for different distances? I find cargo aging a bit confusing tbh. :D
I think a lot of us find it confusing :D

Whether 64 tiles is 'long' really depends on playstyle. I play mostly 256x256 maps, so 64 tiles is 'long' there. 64 tiles is probably 'short' on much bigger maps :wink:

The actual measure is 'days in transit for the vehicle', but that's really hard to keep track of.

With cargodist, it's even harder to keep track of, because a train going A->B->C->D might have passengers travelling A->B and passengers travelling A->D.

TL;DR, Iron Horse guide

1. Use metro in high population cities, the capacity per tile is valuable.
2. For trains between towns, if you have lots of room for stations, use Luxury Passenger Coaches, if you are short of room for stations, use Passenger Coaches (more capacity per tile).
3. You can test which performs better for a route by swapping the coaches and seeing which makes more money.
4. In later game, you have lots of money anyway, so just choose what looks nice (also general advice for most of Iron Horse) :D
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.0 Released 21st February 2021

Post by SgtChip »

Sorry for jumping in, but I have a problem. Playing on the newest OpenTTD mobile version, and have attached the driving van trailer to the back of my train. It will not flip to be the front of the train, ever. The main loco is a Screamer. Any idea on why the DVT won't flip? Consist is as follows: Screamer, Passenger car (large) x5, Restaurant car, DVT MK2. I've tried it on both 8 bit and 24 bit. Not sure what I should do.
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.0 Released 21st February 2021

Post by Emperor Jake »

SgtChip wrote: 25 Feb 2021 01:11 Sorry for jumping in, but I have a problem. Playing on the newest OpenTTD mobile version, and have attached the driving van trailer to the back of my train. It will not flip to be the front of the train, ever. The main loco is a Screamer. Any idea on why the DVT won't flip? Consist is as follows: Screamer, Passenger car (large) x5, Restaurant car, DVT MK2. I've tried it on both 8 bit and 24 bit. Not sure what I should do.
Train direction flipping isn't a feature of this set, and I doubt it'll be added unless OpenTTD changes to support it officially (the current implememtation on other sets is a bit complex and hackish, it only visually swaps the graphics for engine and DVT, which simply wouldn't work for how flexible and variable Iron Horse consists are)
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.0 Released 21st February 2021

Post by SgtChip »

Emperor Jake wrote: 25 Feb 2021 05:19
SgtChip wrote: 25 Feb 2021 01:11 Sorry for jumping in, but I have a problem. Playing on the newest OpenTTD mobile version, and have attached the driving van trailer to the back of my train. It will not flip to be the front of the train, ever. The main loco is a Screamer. Any idea on why the DVT won't flip? Consist is as follows: Screamer, Passenger car (large) x5, Restaurant car, DVT MK2. I've tried it on both 8 bit and 24 bit. Not sure what I should do.
Train direction flipping isn't a feature of this set, and I doubt it'll be added unless OpenTTD changes to support it officially (the current implememtation on other sets is a bit complex and hackish, it only visually swaps the graphics for engine and DVT, which simply wouldn't work for how flexible and variable Iron Horse consists are)
Ah, I see. Iron Horse does not flip the graphics, I thought it, but I was wrong. Thanks.
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.1 Released 9th March 2021

Post by Deicide »

Am I the only one who can't download 2.21.1 version in-game? In-game browser claims that 2.21.0 is the latest one, even though 2.21.1 is visible on Bananas.
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.1 Released 9th March 2021

Post by KeepinItRail »

Deicide wrote: 09 Mar 2021 18:39 Am I the only one who can't download 2.21.1 version in-game? In-game browser claims that 2.21.0 is the latest one, even though 2.21.1 is visible on Bananas.
You’re not the only one, and it’s not just this NewGRF. The same this is happening with U&Ratt as well. :(
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.1 Released 9th March 2021

Post by nihues »

It's on now, ufiby's too
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.1 Released 9th March 2021

Post by andythenorth »

Deicide wrote: 09 Mar 2021 18:39 Am I the only one who can't download 2.21.1 version in-game? In-game browser claims that 2.21.0 is the latest one, even though 2.21.1 is visible on Bananas.
Frosch has resolved the bananas issue, thanks :)
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.1 Released 9th March 2021

Post by anatolyeltsov »

Hi!

I've tried to compile latest Iron Horse from github but getting error with nmlc while make:

Code: Select all

[RENDER NML] render_nml.py
Vacant numeric ID slots: 5580 onwards
5.89s
nmlc -l generated/lang --verbosity=4 --nfo=generated/iron-horse.nfo generated/iron-horse.nml
Reading lang ... 0.0 s
Reading ... 0.0 s
Init parser ... 0.0 s
Parsing ... 1.7 s
 nmlc ERROR: "generated/iron-horse.nml", line 20727: Switch-block requires 4 parameters, encountered 20
make: *** [Makefile:95: generated/iron-horse.nfo] Error 1
I use Python 3.8.5, nml 0.5.3, ply 3.11, tried with pil 7.0.0 and 8.1.2 - both no luck

The error is from here:

Code: Select all

switch (FEAT_TRAINS, SELF, switch_initialise_alt_var_41,
        id_1,id_2,id_3,id_4,id_5,id_6,id_7,id_8,id_9,id_10,id_11,id_12,id_13,id_14,id_15,id_16, [
            STORE_TEMP(id_1, 1)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_2, 2)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_3, 3)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_4, 4)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_5, 5)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_6, 6)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_7, 7)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_8, 8)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_9, 9)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_10, 10)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_11, 11)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_12, 12)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_13, 13)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_14, 14)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_15, 15)
            ,
            STORE_TEMP(id_16, 16)
        ]){
    return switch_initialise_alt_var_41_store_temps;
}
Do you have any suggestions on what's going wrong?
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.1 Released 9th March 2021

Post by 2TallTyler »

NML 0.5.3 doesn't support parameters in switches, and there has not been a public release since that feature was added. You'll need to build NML from the source.
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.1 Released 9th March 2021

Post by anatolyeltsov »

2TallTyler wrote: 22 Mar 2021 21:02 NML 0.5.3 doesn't support parameters in switches, and there has not been a public release since that feature was added. You'll need to build NML from the source.
Oh, thanks a lot! How could I haven't noticed this?! 8o
Built it from source and now it works!
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.1 Released 9th March 2021

Post by LaChupacabra »

I did a little test with the passenger carriages and saw a few features that could be problematic in the game:
1. The cost of maintaining the carriages is much higher (x3) than that specified in the purchase menu.
2. The reduction of very high cost of carriages maintenance is so great that restaurant carriages are becoming a mandatory element of almost every train.
3. The greatest impact of restaurant carriages is seen on short, and especially very short, journeys (less than 20 days).
4. On medium routes (100-150 days), trains without restaurant carriages are likely to generate losses. On my, optimal route, the profit barely exceeded 1000 pounds.
5. Accelerated cargo aging makes trains less competitive than other means of transport.
6. It can be difficult to handle a long multi-city route also due to fast cargo aging.
7. In the purchase menu there is no difference between a Luxury Passenger Coach and an ordinary Passenger Coach - the only difference is the payload to the disadvantage of the former.

Not all the comparisons I've made are here, but you can see on what basis I made these observations.
Iron Restaurant TEST, 2094-06-09.sav
(377.69 KiB) Downloaded 111 times
I am sorry for may English. I know is bed.
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andythenorth
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.0 Released 21st February 2021

Post by andythenorth »

andythenorth wrote: 21 Feb 2021 21:22 Iron Horse 2.21.0 now on Bananas!

This is an extra special BAD FEATURE release adding...Restaurant Cars :twisted:
The next release of Iron Horse will remove Restaurant Cars. Not all BAD FEATURES are a good idea. :twisted:

It's not a simple revert, so I won't get it done for a few days, cheers.
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.1 Released 9th March 2021

Post by Ragin1_ »

How come? I actually quite like the resturant cars, they help to define long distance passenger trains for me
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.1 Released 9th March 2021

Post by 2TallTyler »

I also like restaurant cars. If some players feel they are overpowered, they need not use them. :)
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andythenorth
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Re: Iron Horse! 2.21.1 Released 9th March 2021

Post by andythenorth »

Explanation
  • bug in nml means pax car running costs are 3x what they are shown as in purchase menu
  • current costs were balanced using half a day of play-testing, without noticing the bug
  • am not prepared to repeat that testing with new costs
  • player test report shows that my testing was a waste of time anyway
  • conclusion: delete restaurant cars, move on
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